When Obidiah Stane took over Tony's company he mass produced the Guardsman Armor for the U.S. government. The government used the suits to man the Vault, the maximum-security super-villain prison deep in the Rockies. That is until Iron Man enforced a product "recall."

While the full specs of the Stane International Guardsman Armor were highly classified, much can be inferred from the previous Guardsman armors worn by the O'Brien brothers.

The original suit (Model I, Mark I) had all the basic powers of Tony's Iron Man armor of the time. He designed the suit to be every bit as tough as his own Iron Man suit, if not as versatile--a fact that is not surprising as Tony may have intended it to replace him as S.I.'s armored hero.

Known capabilities: Flight, great strength, and repulsor rays.

Current status: Laying on a junk pile. During the Armor Wars, Stark didn't want to risk the suits ending up in the wrong hands so he went after them (#228). Like many other armored beings, the Guardsman armor was negated, left thoroughly worthless when its circuits were fused.

Note: The Guardsman suit had one known critical flaw. It seemed to act adversely on already unsettled minds. With Stane less than ethical reputation it is a safe assumption that he would not have fixed this defect, even if he knew about it. Had Tony not interveened, he may have had to eventually face a torqued-up prison guard, one in a mighty armored shell of his own design.